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Fatemeh Sadeghi* Bypassing Islamism and Feminism: Women’s Resistance and Rebellion in Post-revolutionary Iran Abstract. This paper explores the reason behind the crisis of representation in post-revolutionary competing Iranian gender discourses. These competing discourses include Islamic fundamental- ism, religious revisionism, and secular feminism. The crisis of representation is related to at least three main presuppositions and attendant action programs: first, discrimination against women and possible accommodations should be examined in the context of religious and legal institutions. This approach resulted in the depoliticization of women’s issues, even though most Iranian women have persistently proclaimed equality and citizenship through political participation. This was the case for the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the reform movement and most recently, the Green Movement following the 2009 presidential election. The second presupposition is that individual identity is a fundamental condition for socio-political activism. The third presupposition is that discrimina- tion against women in post-revolutionary Iran is essentially a legalist strategy and has resulted in campaigns that failed to address women’s daily challenges. On the contrary, women’s political participation in post-revolutionary Iran shows that gender issues are always political issues and need to be understood politically and politicized. Such a notion challenges attitudes which relegate gender discrimination and social solutions to the purview of religion or secularism. Keywords: Islamic fundamentalism, religious revisionism, secular feminism, reform movement, Green Movement * Research fellow, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands REMMM 128, 209-228 210 / Fatemeh Sadeghi Résumé. Au-delà de l’islamisme et du féminisme : la résistance et la rébellion des femmes dans l‘Iran postrévolutionnaire Cet article explore les raisons à l’origine de la crise de représentation des différents discours sur l’égalité sexuelle dans l’Iran postrévolutionnaire. Parmi ces discours l‘intégrisme islamique rivalise avec le révisionnisme religieux, et le féminisme laïc. La crise de représentation est liée à au moins trois présuppositions majeures et aux programmes d‘action subséquents: dans un premier temps, la discrimination des femmes et les recours possibles doivent être envisagés dans le cadre des insti- tutions religieuses et juridiques. Cette approche a conduit à la dépolitisation des questions relatives aux femmes, même si la plupart des femmes iraniennes continuent à revendiquer l’égalité et la citoyenneté par leur participation politique. Cela a été le cas lors de la révolution islamique de 1979, du Mouvement de Réforme et, plus récemment, du Mouvement Vert qui a suivi l‘élection présiden- tielle de 2009. La seconde présupposition est que l‘identité individuelle constitue le fondement de l‘activisme sociopolitique. La troisième est que la discrimination à l’égard des femmes dans l’Iran postrévolutionnaire est essentiellement une stratégie légaliste qui a donné lieu à des campagnes mais n’a pas réussi à aborder le problème des femmes au quotidien. Au contraire, la participation politique des femmes montre que les questions d’inégalité des sexes dans l‘Iran postrévolutionnaire sont toujours des questions politiques qui doivent être traitées sur le plan politique et politisées. Cette notion défie l’attitude qui relègue la discrimination sexuelle et les solutions possibles à la compétence de la religion ou de la laïcité. Mots-clés : Intégrisme islamique, révisionnisme religieux, féminisme laïc, mouvement de réforme, Mouvement Vert A critical review of the principal gender discourses put forward in post-revo- lutionary Iran, this paper explores the crisis of their representation. It also looks into the alternative political strategies used by women who seek to challenge their discriminatory condition both through individual resistance and by collec- tive action. Besides major political events such as the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the 1997 reform movement and the newly formed Green Movement – all of which have enormously affected women’s lives – post-revolutionary Iran has also been at the center of at least three competing gender discourses: the fundamentalist discourse, the religious revisionism, and the secular feminist discourse. While the second and the third discourses have successfully introduced practices against discriminatory conditions, they are experiencing a crisis in the representation of women’s inter- ests. This is partly due to the elaboration of other dichotomies, where personal and social identities are mingled while platforms for action are mostly based on reli- gious attitudes. Such gender discrimination together with institutionalized ethnic and economic inequalities seems to reinforce the processes of political hegemony. These competing discourses are insufficiently inclusive from the standpoint of vari- ous feminine interests as well as from the standpoint of the diversity of Iranian society in terms of class, ethnicity, and religion. The religious revisionism and the secular feminist discourse appear to have successfully questioned and deconstructed some of the more inflexible discrimina- Bypassing Islamism and Feminism: … and Rebellion in Post-revolutionary Iran / 211 tory positions of Islamic fundamentalism, especially as concerns the fundamental dichotomy of public versus private distinction. There remain however, a number of discriminatory systems based on class and ethnicity as well as issues relating to religious versus secular practices which tend to perpetuate and legitimate power relations in the name of shariah. Through individual or collective action, and more specifically, through political participation, many women have understood these dynamics although their actions have not, at least thus far, achieved political or civil equality. The 1979 Islamic Revolution gave women an opportunity to participate in the political processes. However, shortly after the Islamic Republic was established, Islamic fundamentalists began marginalizing women on religious pretext. As a result, in the first decade of the Islamic Republic, an increasing number of women sought to challenge their discriminatory condition through reinterpretation of judi- cial texts used to justify gender discrimination. Such practices led to a movement known as Islamic Feminism which impacted both the domestic and international arenas. Despite major achievements, the trend and discourse which we will refer to as religious revisionism,2 were not supported by a majority of Iranian women for the various reasons which we explore below. The reform movement that led to Khatami’s election in the 1997 presidential contest, provided another opportunity for women to become more involved in the political process, and to counter a process of depoliticization of women’s issues resulting from post war policies. The decline of the reform movement together with the conservative takeover begun in 2002 have produced the most discrimina- tory conditions ever experienced by Iranian women. The situation coincides with the appearance of the secular feminist trend and various campaigns against the violent policies and practices of hard-line conservatives following the election in 2005 of Ahmadinejad. Iranian women have a hard time identifying with Islamism, feminism and secularism and failed to rally to the feminist movement, just as they mostly remained to the religious revisionism. Opportunities for political action were available to women in the events following the fraudulent elections of June 2009. Through widespread decisive political participation, many Iranians not only protested the direction the country was being taken, but they challenged the basic framework of thinking, action and dichotomies elaborated either by the State or by social forces including the women’s movement. The questions developed in this paper arise from observations and experiences of working on women’s issues in Iran. The main question is why the Iranian women’s movement, despite tremendous efforts could not find acceptance as a platform for action by a majority of Iranian women, and why women of different social back- 2 “Religious revisionist” equates to religious reformism. Yet, in this context I use revisionism to distinguish it from the political reformism movement. Revisionism, which has been suggested by the Iranian linguist Dariush Ashuri, is used to describe the new religious attitudes towards different aspects of post-revolutio- nary Iran. REMMM 128, 209-228 212 / Fatemeh Sadeghi grounds prefer to act individually or according to an entirely different political agenda. The observations of the pre- and post-electoral events in Iran contributed to raise this question and the consequent effort to answer it by considering the gaps, weaknesses and shortages. Although there are other alternative answers to this question mostly referring to the weaknesses of organization (Bayat, 2007b), or else to the oppressive political climate, this paper will argue that answers will be found in the under-representation of women’s interests in post 1979 gender discourses. Since 2005, many women have become politicized in response to the conservative discrimination inherent in Ahmadinejad’s policies. Many of these women however, are not interested in feminist activities, whether Islamist or secularist. The trend is much like what happened in the reform era, which was built largely

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